In my Pat. No. 4,250,799 entitled "SWEEPING AIR STREAM APPARATUS AND METHOD" I disclose a resilient vane or reed oscillator which is rendered oscillatable between a pair of extreme positions solely by air flow to cause the air to issue from the device in a sweeping air stream or fan shaped pattern. In that device, the upstream end of the reed or vane had attached or formed thereon a weight element and the downstream was secured in a fixed relation so that the air passing through the duct impinged on the weighted upstream end of the thin metal reed to initiate and sustain oscillation of the reed back and forth in the air stream. The reed is fairly broad and wide and acts like a moving wall to deflect or direct the existing air jet stream in a sweeping fashion. Since the upstream end of the reed is unsupported and is required that during its any direction or its travel that it does not contact any structure, the fluid air streams can and do at times distort the bending axis of the reed and thereby creating a clicking sound much in the fashion of the cricket noise makers used at parties, Halloween and New Year times. However, such noise making is very undesirable and because of the distortion in the spring metal itself tends to greatly reduce the life of the element when used as an oscillator. The objects of the present invention are to provide improved oscillating reed structures which are essentially clickless or noiseless and have long operating lifes.
These objects and the advantages of the invention are achieved by providing a transverse stiffening of the reed element in directions transverse to the direction of air flow so as to limit bending of the reed element during its oscillations along a axis which is transverse to the direction of air flow. That is to say, the axis of stiffening is parallel to the bending axis but it does not detract from the flexibility and oscillating function of the device. In a preferred embodiment, the bending is a gentle curvature or bending or the reed element over substantially the entire body. In addition, the body of the reed support element has a slot in it with the mouth of the slot gently rounded or smoothed to receive and clamp the downstream end of the reed element so that there are no sharp edges against which the body of the reed element is engaged during oscillation. Moreover the edges of the reed element is polished to remove notches etc., all of these features avoiding metal fatigue of the reed body leading to extended life of the oscillator element per se.